


Antichrist Problems

by callowyn, thegeminisage



Series: Cambionverse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Agoraphobia, Arachne - Freeform, Cohabitation, Dream Sharing, Fire Powers, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Haircuts, Hypervigilance, Monster of the Week, Rawheads, Sleep talking, Trauma, Trust Issues, Tulpas, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 10:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callowyn/pseuds/callowyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegeminisage/pseuds/thegeminisage
Summary: The Antichrist is officially shacked up with two hunters, which means it's the perfect time to be wrestling with the unholy amount of hellfire he just inherited—not to mention heartache, haircuts, and strange dreams. What could go wrong?





	1. Not being able to leave your room.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and happy March 29th, 2019! This is a very cool date because it is not only Jesse Turner's 21st birthday, but the in-universe date that [_Cambion_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/221050), our very first fic, begins.
> 
> Possibly familiar to you as a [longstanding blog tag](http://cambionverse.tumblr.com/tagged/antichrist%20problems), this fic, _Antichrist Problems_ , is now also a collection of short ficlets that take place shortly after [_Cambion_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/221050) (featured in the prologue) and before [_Only Human_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/468532). We posted the first chapter last year to celebrate Jesse's birthday, and now we're back with the rest at last! If you haven't read [_Cambion_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/221050), today is literally the most perfect day possible for it—you won't understand very much of this fic without that one under your belt first.
> 
>  **Warnings** for this fic include: mild references to disordered eating, possession, and self-injury, some light content involving grief, anxiety, and hypervigilance, and some extremely heavy stuff about deep and long-lasting trauma. There are multiple descriptions of smoking (from the smoking character's perspective), multiple descriptions of torture (all as a past event, none in the present), descriptions of beheading and drowning, and graphic details about dead bodies and what people look like when they are burned alive. If we missed anything, please feel free to send us a message on [tumblr](http://cambionverse.tumblr.com/ask/)!

__

_"You are," Ben says, "the worst Antichrist I have ever met. Come here."_

_"Wh," says Jesse, and then Ben is wrapping his arms around Jesse's torso and squeezing. Part of his mind panics and yells_ is this a fight? Are we in a fight? _But a much larger part has gone sort of soft around the edges thinking,_ oh. This is—oh.

_Claire catches Jesse's eye over Ben's shoulder and stage-whispers, "Better you than me." But she's smiling now too, and Ben doesn't seem to take any offense as he pulls away. (Just as well. It wouldn't do for him to stay long enough to notice how loud Jesse's heart is beating.)_

_"Shut up," says Ben. "We came out of this with more people alive than we started with, I'm allowed to be happy." He punches Jesse on the shoulder. "There. Masculinity restored. Now let's go get some burgers."_

_Jesse almost doesn't want to risk it, but he has to ask. "All of us?"_

_Ben's smile softens. After all, he just asked this question himself. "Yeah." A beat. "And you're picking up the bill."_

_"Oh, come off it," says Jesse, and in their good-natured bickering he forgets to be nervous about following the both of them back to the truck. Ben hops in the driver's seat and pats the dash fondly, arguing all the while, as Jesse climbs in and finds himself squished between these two hunters that somehow managed to become his friends._

_"Seriously," Claire says in an undertone, as Jesse's silence prompts Ben to begin a monologue about cheeseburgers he has known and loved. "For as long as you want. Stay."_

_And that, Jesse finds, will be a very long time._

 

 

 

* * *

# A N T I C H R I S T  
P R O B L E M S

* * *

 

 

 

Three days, one hour, and—Jesse glances at the bedside clock—fifty-three minutes later, Ben is gone.

He's only a few miles away, of course. It's easy to understand why Ben wants to see Sam and Dean now that his three-year-long search for them is finally over. But why they had to come back to Sioux Falls to do it…

Jesse rubs his arms and looks out to the parking lot below the window for at least the thousandth time that day. The Winchesters are back at that awful house that Ben once called the safest place in the world, and even a motel on the other side of town feels way too close to the iron door of the panic room.

"You hungry?" he asks Claire. She was awake before he and Ben were, so she might have had breakfast, but he didn't see her eat lunch and it's nearly sundown now. His own stomach has been growling for hours.

"I'm reading," says Claire.

Yeah, he's got that. She's had her eyes glued to the iPad since Ben left—didn't look up when Jesse went for a shower, or when he read every magazine in the nightstand, or when he tidied up the entire motel room around her; she either hasn't noticed the time going by or doesn't care. If Ben were here, he'd get Claire some food anyway, bring it back and wave it under her nose while very pointedly not asking her to eat it.

Jesse could do that. He's got a good bit of American cash shoved in his father's wallet now, and there's a 24-hour Biggerson's open across the street. He stares down at the people filing in and out, cars a steady stream through the drive-in window, pedestrians hurrying down the streets. A young family strolls by the motel, their little toddler a spitting image of its parents. Jesse moves closer to the window to watch them down the end of the block.

_BARK BARK BARK BARK!_

Jesse flinches at the sudden sound and fire leaps to life inside him, ready to defend, to kill. He can _see_ the dog, for God's sake, it's just a little terrier, but as he stumbles away from the window he's still thinking of hellhounds and Meg and _too many people can see him._

Meg is gone, he reminds himself, heart pounding with tainted blood. She's gone, and he took her power, permanently; she can't hurt him anymore.

In fact—he smothers a hysterical laugh, luckily quiet enough not to catch Claire's attention. The Simmses are gone too, aren't they? If he believes what Meg said outside Purgatory, the soul of every single person in the Simms family is burning in Hell. It doesn't matter whether he's in Sioux Falls or New South Wales: the Simmses are not following him anymore.

He leans against the glass, seized with sudden vertigo, and sees that the windowsill is scorched in the shape of his hand.

His laughter dies in his throat. That could have been any one of the hundred thousand people wandering around down there—he could've touched that dog, or that kid, and turned them to ash. Sure, _Jesse_ might hesitate before hurting an innocent person, but Meg never did, and now that her powers are inside him they might not either. He draws the curtains and goes back to his bed. As oppressive and tiny as this motel room is, at least he knows it's safe—for him, and for everyone else.

Claire still hasn't looked in his direction. He watches her eyes fly across the screen for a minute, then asks, "Do you think Ben's going to stay with Dean overnight?"

"I don't know," says Claire tonelessly. "This is the first time Dean's been alive since I met him." She continues to read.

Right. That is one good thing Jesse's done in all of this: he gave Ben his father back. Jesse tucks his hands under his arms, lies down, and keeps waiting.

* * *

The sun is setting by the time Ben makes it back, approximately seven hours and fifteen minutes after he left. Jesse sits up as soon as he hears the door unlatch, but Ben doesn’t look at him, instead staring dejectedly at his phone. "Katie called," he says.

To Jesse’s surprise, Claire looks up. "How's Emily?"

"Her witchcraft isn’t working anymore." Ben peels off his jacket. "Katie says she’s been crying on and off since Dean dropped her back in Colorado. They're still not sure what Meg did to her."

Claire lets out a long breath. "Well, she's alive," she says. "And with people who know what happened. That's something, at least."

Jesse hunches his shoulders, thinking of the black smoke he drew out of Emily's mouth with hardly a thought to the body it had been riding in. “I should have been more careful,” he blurts. “I could’ve—gotten Meg out sooner, or, I don’t know, if I had just noticed her there in the first place—”

"None of us noticed," Ben says. He flops down on the bed, sprawled out next to Jesse. "I’m the one who’s supposed to be so good at hunting, but I still let the Queen of Hell walk off with my best friend’s girlfriend. Katie's never gonna forgive me."

“It wasn’t _your_ fault,” Jesse tells him, and Claire looks sharply at the both of them.

“It wasn’t either of your faults. Possession leaves scars, that’s just what happens when something uses your body without permission. It was probably too late the moment Meg chose her.”

Jesse and Ben don’t look at each other, but Jesse’s willing to bet they’re both thinking of the same thing: those white enochian letters scrolling across Claire’s legs, carved there by her own hand. Some scars are more literal than others.

After a heavy pause, Jesse clears his throat and looks back at Ben’s prone form. “What about Dean?” he asks, hopefully casual. “Is he, you know, happy to be back? Are they gonna live here now?” He can't imagine anywhere _less_ appealing than Singer Salvage, but to the Winchesters, it's probably the perfect fit.

"Said it was too depressing to be there without Bobby," Ben tells the ceiling. "I helped them burn the body of that old man, you remember that one the demons left in the front hall? Then they locked the place up for good."

"Dean won't be happy until he gets another six thousand miles with that car," Claire says derisively. "I'm surprised he didn't take you with him."

The thought makes Jesse's stomach clench, but Ben just huffs. "He told me to go back to _school,"_ he says. "Like I didn't hear all about how that went for Sam! Just sit quietly and pretend I never knew anything about monsters!" He flops his arms on either side of his head, still flat on his back. "Dean's the one who taught me how to _do_ this, you know? I've been hunting things this whole time, _saving_ people. Like, fuck, I know what I'm doing."

Claire is picking at the inseam of her leggings. "Finding Dean was what you set out to do," she says. "You're allowed to stop now, if you wanted to."

"Yeah, well, I don't." Ben rolls on his side and waits for Claire to make eye contact. "We said the same thing right after Purgatory, remember? It's still you and me." A pause. "And Jesse."

" _Thanks_ ," says Jesse from his other side, hoping the sarcasm will cover his relief. Ben has so many other people to turn to: Dean, for one, and then people like Katie and places like The Salt Round, places that would never let Jesse through the door. He doesn't need to keep dragging a volatile cambion along with him—but Jesse is endlessly glad that he does.

Claire nods at whatever unspoken current is running between them. "In that case," she says, "I advise you ignore Dean and keep hunting however you want to. It's a bit late for him to be giving you advice."

"I'm sure he would have if he could," says Ben dourly. "Down there in Purgatory yelling, _Ben! Eyes up!_ "

 _Come on, mate, eyes on the prize!_ cackles Oliver Simms in Jesse's memory. The Simms family may be burning in Hell, but Dean is one hunter still very much alive.

"But they're leaving," Jesse says aloud. "Right? So we don't have to stay in South Dakota anymore."

"Man, you hate it here, don't you?" says Ben, not unsympathetic. "Yeah, Sam and Dean are probably already on their way to Kansas. They've got some mysterious key to investigate, I dunno. But I—" He sits up finally, bringing himself much closer to Jesse's face. "I am not going anywhere until I've had dinner. Did you guys eat already?"

There's a long pause. It seems like Claire doesn't want to say no, and Jesse doesn't want to narc on her, but if either of them says yes they'll be lying, which means it'll give her a headache, but then by _not_ saying anything it's got to be obvious anyway—

Ben crosses his arms. "Claire."

"I'm not hungry," she says, returning to her reading. "Get something for Jesse, he's been antsy all day."

"I'm bringing you back something," Ben threatens, levering himself off the bed. He gives Jesse a once-over. "You wanna come with?"

Jesse's empty stomach growls. He thinks of the handprint burned into the windowsill, wonders if he can be trusted outside with his powers so out of control. But...Jesse remembers Ben's voice counting him out of a panic attack the last time they were in Sioux Falls, _one, two, three, four,_ while an army of demons was swirling around their heads. Surely Ben can keep Jesse calm long enough for one meal run.

"Love to," he says, and doesn't let himself hesitate at the open door.

Ben keeps glancing at Claire, though, even when they're down in the parking lot and she's only a light in the motel room window. "Did she really not eat this entire day?" he asks.

"Not that I saw," Jesse admits. "I dozed off for a bit, yeah, but I was in the room with her the whole time. Just kept reading."

"She didn't eat yesterday, either. I wonder what she's so caught up in." His frown lasts until they reach the Biggerson's across the street, at which point Jesse's entire midsection gives an audible growl. Ben raises one eyebrow at him. "You know, you could've gone to get something without her."

Jesse shrugs. A loud group of teens pushes towards the door ahead of them, and he hangs back to let them pass, shoving his hands in his pockets. He doesn't let out his breath until the door swings closed again. "It didn't seem like a good idea."

Ben moves closer, almost touching shoulders. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just—" There's no one around to hear, but Jesse's voice drops of its own accord. "Meg's powers, all this fire, it's not—bad things tend to happen to people who startle me. Didn't want to risk a crowd."

"But you came with me," Ben points out.

"Well." Jesse can feel his face heat up, and pushes through the door to hide it. "You wouldn't let me hurt anyone, right?"

The line at Biggerson's is long, but Jesse gets through it without incident; somehow Ben manages to keep himself between Jesse and anyone who might have accidentally bumped into him. "Claire doesn't like crowds either," he explains, once they've escaped to the fresh air of the sidewalk again. "Even having me hang around stresses her out sometimes."

He's already halfway through his burger, but at that Jesse slows, thinking of the oppressive closeness of the motel room in which Claire is now alone for the first time all day. He swallows. "Do we—should we have eaten at the restaurant?"

"That would have stressed _you_ out," says Ben with casual confidence. They reach the motel, and instead of heading back towards the room, he crosses the parking lot to his truck and vaults up into the open back, grinning. "How's this?"

Something loosens in Jesse's chest, and he can't help his smile as he climbs up after Ben, burger in hand.

"I was so sick of being inside," Jesse admits between bites. The sun has set, but it's not all the way dark yet, and the stars are just barely visible in the far east. "This was always my favorite time of day, back in the desert. Right when the heat started to ease off, but there was still enough light to see by."

Ben noisily slurps at his fountain drink. "You homesick?"

Jesse hadn't exactly enjoyed his single night in the mountains of Colorado, and living indoors has a lot of perks, especially in the running water department. Still, for three years, the wilderness was more than his sanctuary; it was his only friend, where he made his home. "Maybe," he says. "I think—mostly I miss the sky. Being out in the open. No traps."

For a moment he thinks he's said too much; that Ben will say something like, _you should go back if you miss it so much_. Instead he says, "Next time come out here."

Jesse pauses mid-bite to look at him. "Huh?"

"When you're going stir-crazy and we're somewhere crowded," Ben explains. "Parking lots are almost always empty. So you can come out here and chill in the back of the truck, like we are now. Nice big open sky. No people."

"Oh." A new sanctuary, one they'll bring with them wherever they go. Jesse clears his throat, which has become dangerously tight. "That's...a good idea. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Ben smiles, and bumps Jesse's shoulder with his own. This time, Jesse's powers don't leap to his defense. Something in his hindbrain has finally decided Ben isn't a threat.


	2. Holding too much hellfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! If you happen to be coming here from an email alert, please be advised: this is the second chapter of this fic. The first was posted exactly one year ago as part of our annual March 29th celebrations, and all appropriate warnings and notes for the fic as a whole are now at the beginning of that chapter. It's a pretty short read, so if your memory's a little fuzzy after such a long break, we definitely advise going back to check it out!

Jesse's first hunt was an accident. From the branches of a graveyard tree, he watched wide-eyed while Oliver and Elias Simms tried desperately to burn a vengeful spirit who was doing a very good job of keeping them both away from her open grave. Oliver would later insist they had the situation under control, but Jesse saw two people chucking lit matches towards a hole in the ground while invisible hands tore and tore at them with no reprieve. At the time, he didn't understand what good it would do to set the bones afire, only that these two boys were desperate to do so before she killed them both—and if Jesse was ever good for anything, it was making things burn. He slipped down from the tree, unnoticed by ghost or brothers, and dropped a handful of lifesaving flames into the open grave. It wasn't until many months later that the Simms brothers ever suspected he had no need for matches.

And here he is four years later, with two different hunters chasing the same goal. They're in a tiny, kudzu-covered town in South Carolina after heavy storms, and they have to slosh through several puddles on the way to the grave. None of them are especially keen to dig under these conditions, but old Josiah Crane needs to be exhumed and exterminated, so here they are. Ben and Claire take it in shifts to watch over the growing pit with a salt-filled shotgun; Jesse, who still dislikes guns, slops away at the wet ground with whoever's unlucky enough to join him. By the time Ben's shovel finally clanks on something hard, it's started raining again.

" _Hurk_ ," says Ben at the stench that comes billowing out of the coffin to greet them. "God, that never gets any less the worst. Quick, hand me the salt."

"You're telling me it's like this every time?" Jesse waves the canister at him, hiding his nose—and his eyes—in the sleeve of his sweatshirt. For all the people Jesse's killed, he hasn't actually seen that many dead bodies; his powers don't usually leave a lot left to look at. The rain drums down on what's left of the man's skin. "How're you gonna burn him in this weather?"

Ben grins, shaking wet curls out of his face. "Gasoline," he says gleefully. "Hey Claire, can you toss down—?"

There's a blueish flicker at Jesse's side. Before he can finish his sentence, Ben is lifted bodily and flung from the grave, past the mound of mud and out of sight.

"Ben!"

The air feels very cold. Jesse hears two shots go off and scrambles up the dirt walls, slipping and cursing, in time to see Claire's shotgun fly across the grass while a man wearing white looms towards her. Claire puts up her empty hands, eyes narrowed as she's herded away from their weapons and the spirit's bones. In desperation, Jesse grabs the salt and flings it, canister and all, towards the broad flickering figure between them. Something like a sneer passes over the ghost's face when the throw falls short. Moments later, Jesse himself is yanked upward by some unearthly force and tossed aside like ash off the man's cigar. He hits the ground twenty feet away with a loud _splat_.

What the ghost doesn't know is that Jesse has thrown his own body farther than this, across ground much more dangerous than soft mud. Jesse rolls with the fall and uncurls a second later, heel against a headstone, knife in his hand. All that spectral power barely bruised him, and now he's _pissed._

Fire destroys ghosts. And this ghost needs to be taught that no one moves the Antichrist when he does not want to be moved.

For one brilliant moment it doesn't matter what Dean Winchester warned him against, or what the rational part of him is afraid of becoming: Jesse sees Josiah's cowardly spirit flicker back into existence, and with a snap of his fingers, the body lying in that grave is consumed by a white-hot column of flames.

The ghost screams. The bland mustachioed face contorts, engulfed in fire, leaving scorched teeth and bones exposed before vanishing completely in second death. There's a funny prickling feeling on the skin of Jesse's face, a faint lurch in his stomach. Somehow, almost familiar, this fire makes him feel cold.

Then the last of the embers of the ghost float away in the wind and rain, and Ben and Claire come into focus, silhouetted against the still-burning tower of flame. Jesse's heart drops into his stomach. The fire snuffs itself out as fast as it came, leaving only their wide-eyed stares.

"Fuck." Jesse wipes his palms down the front of his sweater and then balls them firmly in his pockets. They were both so close to the fire— "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"

Claire's expression betrays nothing, of course, but Ben looks visibly spooked. To his credit, he just wipes mud off his face and says, "Well, I am _now_. No big deal."

God, why can't Ben just once do Jesse the common courtesy of _freaking out_ when Jesse does something terrifying? "I could have killed you," Jesse snaps, more angry with himself than Ben. All the years he's spent learning to fight this, and he still can't keep it under control when it matters. Then, very distantly, Jesse hears sirens. "Shit."

"Time to go," Claire says, and the three of them scramble to clean up and get their sodden selves back to the truck before the cops show up. Jesse tries his hardest not to dwell on what almost happened: Ben are Claire are both fine, the fire receded, and he got rid of the ghost, so he just needs to get himself under control enough that it never happens again.

* * *

That resolution lasts approximately two days. In fairness, Jesse's _never_ had himself completely under control: when he was young, reality even catered to his silly childhood beliefs, from joy buzzers that electrocuted the unsuspecting to a bearded tutu-wearing Tooth Fairy that beat people up for their teeth. After he learned what he was, there was still always the threat of uncanny storms or overloaded fuses waiting to manifest his bad moods. It's just, until recently, he could usually tell when the danger was coming and shove his emotions down long enough to get out of town before he got someone killed.

Now, though? Haywire doesn't even begin to cover it. The smallest flash of irritation or worry will bring sparks to his fingertips, and it's much harder to quash than it used to be. In the span of four days, he short-circuits a microwave, manifests a swarm of bees, and blows a billboard in half with a freak lightning strike. "It won't listen to me!" Jesse despairs, the third time he has to replace a set of towels that he's scorched beyond use. "These stupid powers just come out no matter what I tell them. I don't _want_ them."

But it turns out that's not always true.

In a small town in Rhode Island, the last step in a long and difficult hunt is to clean out a literal spider's nest. Arachne, that is. Jesse had never heard of spider-people-monsters before—neither had Ben or Claire; they had to dig around Ben's hunterpedia files for hours—but he can't wait to never hear about them again. Arachne bites are poison, which means fighting from a distance is the safest choice, except for the small problem that the only way to kill them is by cutting off their heads.

Jesse, like the indestructible idiot he is, volunteered for close-quarters detail and managed to convince Ben and Claire to stay just outside while he emptied the nest. Now here he is in this rotting house by himself, sticky with webbing, and cornered by three very angry arachne whose eggs he just smashed.

The first one goes down easy. Claire lent him a machete, heavier and sharper than his hunting knife, and with the right aim it really isn't that hard to separate a head from a body. He's trying not to think about it. The second one, too, dies under his blade without much struggle. He just has to kill the last monster, and then he can go home.

But the final arachne manages to knock the machete out of his grip while he's distracted with its mate—why are they so _sticky—_ and the next thing Jesse knows, his feet are webbed to the floor and his hands are encased in thin, white, alarmingly durable strands. And as soon as he realizes he's restrained, everything Ben and Claire told him about these monsters goes out the window.

Flames spring to life in the corners and race towards him, swallowing the bodies he's already killed, surrounding Jesse's attacker with hungry tongues. The webs around his wrists and ankles melt away. He didn't call for it consciously, but Jesse looks into the inferno with _relief_ —somewhere deep down, he still believes that no matter how terrible the trap, fire will always save him.

Except, of course: arachne are immune to fire.

The house is burning, air oppressive with smoke from the damp wood, but the arachne stands there on its eight legs just as whole as Jesse is. It grins, showing several elongated fangs dripping with poison, and rears back to bite.

Instead of being frightened, Jesse is _furious_. How dare this thing smile like it's got the better of him? Jesse's a _cambion_ , a fire that will never go out. This miserable creature should be _afraid_ of him.

Jesse is going to make it afraid of him.

He shoves forward, not with his hands but with his blood, turning the arachne's fangs aside and sending its body flying against the opposite wall so hard that bits of burning plaster rain down after it. He stalks towards his foe through the fire, watching it gasp and scrabble uselessly at its throat. _That's more like it._

Something glints in the corner of his vision. The machete, the killing instrument. But Jesse has always been stronger than simple blades. With a flick of his hand, the arachne's neck crunches a full 180˚, head lolling backward on a broken spine—then he squeezes his fist, and it swivels all the way around with such force that the head tears right off the arachne's shoulders, spraying the wall with blood. _Good._ They will pay, these pretenders and all their armies, and not a one of them will be spared—

Abruptly Jesse catches sight of himself in a nearby window. It's dark outside, and the dirty glass offers a clear reflection of his own face—bloodied, haloed in flame, with infernally black eyes.

"Jesse! Jesse, come back!"

Claire's voice hits him like an arrow, and Jesse shudders. Fire is his friend, but suddenly the thick black smoke is suffocating, and he chokes and coughs when he tries to draw breath. His ears are ringing. He glances back at his mirrored face again: dirty and miserable and scared to death, very much himself. The black eyes are gone.

 _Armies?_ asks the one rational part of him not drowning in panic. _What armies?_

Jesse bolts, like he always does, and stumbles outside just as the roof of the old house falls in. Ben catches him by the shoulders. "Shit, are you okay?"

"Fire doesn't hurt me," Jesse reminds them, but lets Ben sit him down on the curb so he can catch his breath. He can still feel black smoke crawling down his throat.

Claire scans the flaming wreck, another machete clenched in her hand. "It doesn't hurt arachne, either," she says. "Do we need to go back in?"

Jesse watches the flames eat up the house. It looks uncomfortably like a familiar house in Nebraska. "They're all dead," he says.

She gives a tiny nod, then looks down at him. "And you?"

"I'll live," he says, because _I'm fine_ would be a lie. "Can we go?"

Ben claps him on the back and nearly gets a fireball for his trouble. "Before the cops come is always the best time to leave," he says, blithely unaware. "And hey! No more monsters!"

 _Right_ , thinks Jesse, heart pounding all the way back to the truck. _Just the one._

* * *

It's the stupidest thing that finally makes him realize. Ben's laid up with a twisted ankle after an unfortunate ghoul chase, Claire hovering-not-hovering in silent reproach. They're both snappish, Ben with pain and Claire with worry, and Jesse volunteers to get the next meal just so he can get away from the tension. He manages all right getting there, orders their food without catastrophe, and is most of the way out the door when he gets body-checked by a man entering at the same time.

"Watch it," the guy says without looking up from his phone.

Jesse is so instantly, blindingly furious that he hears himself snarl. _"Hey."_

The man lets the door shut in Jesse's face. Flames leap to life between Jesse's fingertips, singeing the takeout bag, and his mind fills with images of that stranger's body strung up on a seven-sided star while the very skin is flayed from his body. He has ways of punishing disrespect, oh yes, and death is no reprieve when your soul gets dragged down to Hell—

His face tingles. There is a phantom pressure on the back of his neck.

The anger leaves as quick as it came, dousing the flames in his hands. Jesse backpedals into the shadows near the edge of the parking lot where the light can't reach him. Their dinner is splattered in a burn-curled bag next to the door, but he can't go back for it; he's trembling at the echo of thoughts that aren't his.

Jesse does not rule Hell, nor would he ever take someone there. But he does know somebody who would be all too gleeful about a man's eternal damnation: someone sadistic and easily slighted, who loves to be feared. Someone who's supposed to be gone.

But how can Jesse ever be truly rid of Meg, when he took everything she was and let it live inside him?

His powers aren't obeying him because they aren't _his_. That viciousness he feels, the urge to be not just violent but cruel—it's familiar not because it's his, but because he's felt it before, on the other end of a chain linking him to the Queen of Hell. Jesse remembers his own black-eyed reflection over the arachne's corpse, not unlike the dream Meg sent to draw him back to Nebraska to begin with. Will that be all that's left of him, someday? How long can he hold out against a demon he invited in on purpose?

He doesn't retrieve their food. He doesn't go back to the hotel room, either. Instead he walks a big circle around the block, then around another block, and when he feels like he needs to sit down or keep walking forever, he climbs up into the back of Ben's truck and lights a cigarette.

It's funny, how the same smoke that nearly suffocates him when he's afraid can be so soothing from a lit piece of tobacco. The chemicals get purged before they can do much, but that long drag in, the familiar taste, the exhale all force Jesse's nerves to stop screaming at him and let the quiet night fill him up instead. Of all the things he inherited from Oliver Simms, this may be the least painful.

He's nearly down to the filter when he hears a door slam, so the burst of sparks that chews through the rest of the cigarette isn't too much of a waste, for all it starts his heart pumping too fast again. When Jesse sits up, he finds Ben limping towards him, glaring.

"What's wrong?"

" _Pass_ ," says Ben, his jaw jutting out, but then he slumps against the truck. "Dumb fight. Can I come up?"

Jesse doubts he's good company, but he says "Sure," and scoots over to make room as Ben painstakingly climbs in from the back of the truck bed. There's not a lot of room back here with the weapons locker, so they wind up leaned against the cabin together, knocking elbows and limbs.

"What're you doing out here, anyway?" asks Ben as he scoots into place. "I thought you were getting dinner."

Jesse colors. "I tried to. Then I…didn't."

Ben sighs heavily. "Man, I'm sorry," he says. "I knew I should've come with you. Or made Claire go. Not that she ever listens to me." He turns to look at Jesse sideways. "Did you have a panic attack? Was it bad?"

Jesse feels an almost painful surge of affection for this boy, this _hunter_ , who is so willing to offer even the Antichrist the benefit of the doubt. Any other time he might even have been right—but what Jesse felt outside the restaurant hadn't been fear. He takes a deep breath, feels the last of the cigarette smoke drift away. "Not exactly."

"Well, was anyone hurt?" Ben waits until Jesse shakes his head. "And you made it back to us fine, right? So it can't have been too bad."

"I almost set a man on fire," Jesse says. "Because he _bumped into me_. I'm—" There are too many words for what he is. "I don't know how much longer I can take this."

Ben straightens, worry creasing his brow. "It's still that bad?"

"It's always going to _be_ that bad!" Jesse bursts out. "I beat Meg by taking her powers away, but that doesn't mean they disappeared from existence! I'm pushing them down as hard as I can but that just makes them try _harder_ and sooner or later I'm going to—" He bites his tongue, but he's sure Ben can hear how that sentence ends _._

Instead of pulling away, though, Ben nudges closer. "But you're doing it," he says. "You've had some close calls but you've never actually lost control of them, right? I mean, come on—" He gestures to his sprained ankle. "I fuck up way more often than you do. That's just part of being a person."

"Your fuckups don't have a body count," Jesse retorts.

"So you balance them out!" says Ben. "Like, okay, I busted my ankle, but I also killed a ghoul. You might have unleashed Purgatory—which by the way we had every reason to believe wasn't going to happen—but then you also saved Sam and Dean, and suplexed the freaking Queen of Hell, dude! You're doing pretty great from where I'm standing!"

Jesse can't help laughing, even though the guilt still gnaws at him. "Most of that was an accident," he says. "Anyway, I'm not sure it works like that."

"Accident shmaccident," says Ben, waving a hand. "You know what Claire says? A fluke is just a skill you haven't practiced yet."

"I don't want to practice my powers," Jesse says. "My powers are trying to burn the world down."

Ben gets a contemplative look in his eyes, and rubs his mouth for a minute before saying, "Okay. This might be a weird metaphor, but go with me on this. You ever go a long time without, you know—" He makes an obscene hand gesture. Jesse chokes. "—and then you _do_ , and it's like, holy shit, that was a lot?" Thankfully Ben doesn't wait for a reply. "I think your flamey stuff is kind of the same way. You gotta clean the pipes every once in a while so it doesn't build up and explode. Give those powers some exercise and maybe they won't always be bursting at the seams, you know?"

Jesse very carefully does not acknowledge that their shoulders are still pressed together. "You're right," he says. "That was a terrible metaphor."

Ben smacks him on the arm, and it's a testament to their weeks of friendship that no raging fireball bursts forth in return. "Ignore the metaphor! Just—think about it. It could work, right?"

It's true that, after he opened Purgatory, there was a long stretch of time when Jesse could barely feel his powers at all. Before Meg, too, there had been times when he overexerted himself—smiting a legion of hellhounds, for example—and woke up drained, before the flames came back as hungry as before. Maybe, metaphors aside, Ben might be on to something.

"It's risky," says Jesse, mostly to himself. "You two were so close to that grave. If I let them go too much, what if you're caught in the crossfire? I could burn you alive."

Maybe it's because Ben doesn't have the same vivid memory of the Simms' death that Jesse does, but he doesn't seem too concerned. "You won't," he says, twisting to face Jesse. "Give me your hands."

"What?"

"Like this," Ben says, already taking Jesse's hands and pulling them forward. He turns them palm-up, next to each other, like Jesse is cupping water in his hands. "It's dark out here, so make some light. _Just_ ," he adds, "a little. Don't blow up the truck. Don't take out any buildings. And most importantly—" Now Ben turns one hand palm-down and holds it about a foot above Jesse's. "Don't burn me."

"That's too close," Jesse says, eyes wide. "Ben."

"You're so worried, I bet you couldn't even light a match right now," Ben challenges. "Come on. A _little_. I trust you."

Jesse thinks of all the times Ben has nudged him in the side or clapped his shoulder and the fire hasn't leapt to his defense. Thinks of Ben's face close to his own, breaths even, counting.

A little. He can do that.

Instead of thinking _go_ , Jesse starts with his fingertips and works backwards, following the veins to the place in his chest that's always burning. A sour glee beckons to him, but he puts that aside. Thinking of candles, he loosens his grip—just a little. Not enough to hurt.

A tiny flame leaps to life in his hands. Jesse startles, slamming down on his powers out of reflex, and snuffs the flame out.

"See?" Ben says softly. "You got this. Come on, try again."

 _One_ , Jesse thinks, _two, three, four_ , and on each number he lets a little bit more energy spill into his palms. He almost wants to close his eyes, but Ben's counting on him not to let the flame get too high. The little flame grows, and steadies, and stays where Jesse tells it to, flickering a safe distance from Ben's trusting hand.

Very cautiously, Jesse breathes out. "Fuck me, I can't believe that worked."

Ben grins at him from across the flames, eyes shining. "Keep holding it," he says. "As long as you can."

Jesse nods, eyes on the fire. He counts to four again, then again, then again—and when he worries his control is slipping, he closes his hands and the flames go out. It's darker out here without the light between them, but that can't quash the hope rising in Jesse's chest. Slowly, Ben pulls his own hand away.

"Just a skill you haven't practiced yet," he repeats quietly. "You're better than her, Jesse. I know you can do this."

Jesse blinks rapidly and drops his head. It's lucky Ben believes in him, because otherwise—well. He doesn't want to live in the otherwise. The warmth spreading through him now has nothing to do with Hell at all.

After another few moments, Ben scoots toward the end of the truck bed and gives a loud yawn. "Well, Claire's probably pretending to sleep by now, so I'm gonna turn in. You coming up?"

Jesse clears his throat. "Maybe in a minute." He wants time to process, without Claire's penetrating gaze or Ben so close—and the paranoid part of him wants to stay out of flammable buildings until he's really sure he's gotten away with it. "Thank you."

"Mkay. Whenever you're ready." Ben takes a few uneven steps towards the motel entrance, then turns. "You know, there used to be a time when you thought we could never be friends, either, and look at us now."

"Look at us now," Jesse repeats in wonder, and Ben smiles at him before he slips back inside.


	3. Breaking your own dumb heart. Again.

The current monster of the week is a rawhead nesting in the basement of the local elementary school. Rawheads, Jesse learns, are only vulnerable to electricity, making his fire as useless now as it was with the arachne. The three of them arm themselves with tasers and venture into the boiler room after sunset, keeping an eye out for the town's missing kids.

Jesse fucks up. When they find the thing, he panics and squeezes his taser the wrong way around, all his muscles locking in place just as the rawhead lunges towards him. Frozen, he sees wide, hungry mouth, then a blur of motion from beside him, and then Jesse slams to the ground with a tumble of limbs upon him. He hears something _crunch_ and braces himself for ripping teeth at his exposed neck.

But the pain never comes. Instead, there's a loud crackle of electricity and a choked-off scream from the rawhead somewhere above him. Jesse feels its dead weight rolled aside, and then Claire is staggering to her feet right beside him. The light from his dropped flashlight illuminates how her arm now hangs at an unnatural angle, skin starting to swell. Somehow, she managed to throw herself between Jesse and the monster, and now she's the one paying the price for his carelessness.

Being Claire, of course, she pretends that nothing is wrong, but Jesse is having none of it. Bones that heal crooked are painful at best and debilitating at worst, and Claire can't just break and re-break her arm until she gets it right. As soon as they get back to the truck, he starts looking for a splint.

"It can wait, Jesse," she says, holding her arm gingerly away from her body. "Deal with your own injuries. Where's Ben?"

"Rounding up the kids. And in case you didn't notice _—_ " Jesse finds the roll of bandages and gestures at his unblemished body. "I haven't got any."

Claire makes a face. Jesse knows she'd probably rather have Ben here right now, not least because Ben is easily distracted, but they'll have to make do. Her wary eyes follow him towards her.

"Can I?" he asks. He's become so used to Ben's casually tactile nature that it's easy to forget how much Claire hates to be touched. Even injured—especially injured, maybe—she's incredibly defensive of her personal space, and Jesse isn't sure he's earned his right to be there yet.

She doesn't say _yes,_ but she does jerk her head in a quick _get over here_ motion, holding out the broken limb.

Jesse lets out a breath and tentatively reaches out to touch her fingertips, hyperaware of every place his skin meets hers. "Hold still," he murmurs. "I'll try to be quick."

The skin up and down her forearm is already bruising, feverishly hot where he touches it. He bites the inside of his cheek and starts lining up the bone along a wooden stake, which is the closest he could find to a proper splint. He doesn't understand what made her jump in front of him like that. Who risks permanent danger for themselves just to save the Antichrist a temporary spit of pain?

Claire makes a sound, quickly stifled. "Sorry," Jesse mutters; his own skin is nearly buzzing with the contact. This is all his fault. It should be _his_ arm that's broken, his remorselessly durable body that takes the damages their life inflicts. Hell, if he knew how, he'd take on the injuries for all three of them. Ben and Claire deserve someone to protect them instead of someone getting them hurt worse, it's not _fair—_ "Ow!"

"Jesse?"

He drops the stake and stares in bewilderment at his own forearm, which has turned a harsh purple and cracked out of true. Claire's arm, by contrast, looks as straight as if it was never broken, the bruises faded to pale green. Slowly she turns her arm at the elbow and flexes her fingers.

"Shit," says Jesse, because he might not know what just happened but he does know the feeling of bone spurs rejoining under his skin. Quickly he grabs the stake and fumbles to set his own bones. He winces against the sting it brings to his eyes, resigning himself to a second break when this one goes wrong, but then Claire's hands are there to hold his arm in the shape it was meant to be. Only a few moments later, Jesse's injury has faded too.

Claire raises her eyebrows at him.

"It's never done that before," is all Jesse has to offer.

Ben rejoins them, having safely shepherded the three lost children out of their basement prison, and before Jesse can think to stop her she says, "Jesse healed my broken arm."

Ben blinks. "He what now?"

Claire explains as she helps Ben stow away his supplies, with none of the stiff caution to her movements that would mean she's hiding some hurt, and Jesse knows Ben watches her as closely as he does. By the time she finishes, Ben is staring at him in awe.

"I had no idea your healing thing was transferable," he says, examining Jesse's own unbroken arm. "How did you do it? Just lay on the hands, and boom?"

"I didn't _do_ anything," says Jesse, staring at the veins on the back of his own hand. There had been _something,_ a pulse at the very end that ricocheted the hellfire back against him, and he doesn't know what that means. How many more surprises will Meg's legacy bring?

"I didn't realize what was happening in time to pay attention," Claire says. "Given the way Jesse's arm broke right afterward, though, it seems like he had to transfer the damage before he could repair it. It was completely unintentional?"

"Everything I do is unintentional," Jesse mutters. The entire incident reminds him too much of the way he felt when his powers were new—every emotion, every conviction, anything he thought about hard enough poured out of his mind to write itself on reality in seismic proportions. Claire healed properly this time, but what if next time his powers won't know where to stop?

She rotates her wrist and glances at him under her eyelashes. "Can you do it again?"

It's a terrible idea, but Jesse finds it hard to say no to Claire under the best of circumstances. Part of him is also thinking of what this could mean if he figured out how to heal on purpose: no more watching a slow and painful recovery every time something throws his fragile friends around a little too hard. No more moments of panic waiting for them to get up again. If Jesse could heal them, he'd be more than just useful; he might save their lives.

"Let's try it," Ben says, and cheerfully points his knife toward the opposite hand without a moment's hesitation.

"Don't cut across your palm, you idiot," Claire says, grabbing his wrist. "What if you hit a tendon?"

"Jesse's gonna fix it anyway, who cares?"

"Yeah, except if it _doesn't work_ ," says Jesse. "I don't know what I'm doing, all right?"

Claire taps Ben's elbow with two fingers. "Here. Outside of the forearm, near the joint but not at the joint, and stay away from the big veins. Cut with the grain of the muscle so it hurts less."

Ben does as she says: just cuts himself open in the full belief that Jesse can heal him. Blood wells out and Ben offers it to Jesse like a tribute.

Jesse holds him by the elbow and stares at the cut. He had to abandon squeamishness long ago, but something about the utter lack of tension in Ben's muscles makes him queasy. _Make it go away_ , he thinks helplessly, but his powers won't cooperate. Does blood always look this bright, or just Ben's?

"It would be really funny," Ben says after a moment, "if you turned out to be a vampire on top of everything else."

Jesse jerks and lets go, but Ben just grins and flashes his eyebrows at him. "Sorry," Jesse says, looking anywhere but the open wound. "I don't know, it just wasn't going, I'm sorry." He takes Ben's arm again, narrowing his eyes at the slowly-clotting red line, trying not to see it as anything other than a problem he can solve. All his life he's been quashing his powers as far down as they can go, but now, tentatively, he loosens his mental constrictions like he did that night in the truck.

But what comes to him now is exactly what he always gets: hellfire. It burbles up as eagerly as ever, and Jesse just barely has time to tear his hands away before a pulse of flame licks up his fingertips.

"Whoa," says Ben, eyes round. "Nice reflexes, dude."

Jesse feels this response is lacking an appropriate level of distress. "I almost burned you _again_ ," he tells Ben. "This is what I mean, you see? Even when I'm the one fucking up, it's always someone else getting hurt for it."

"Hey, you didn't actually get me. You never do." Now that it's clear Jesse can't do anything for him, Ben finds the bandage they were going to use on Claire and presses it against his cut, with no apparent resentment. "Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be on death's door soon enough." He bites off a piece of tape to affix the bandage. "You'll have plenty of chances to try again."

"Don't get hurt for me, Ben," Jesse warns, and puts away the first aid kit. "When push comes to shove, my power is the last thing we can count on."

* * *

Jesse may be the most dangerous of the three of them, but when it comes to _odd_ , Claire has him beat. After a supply run to the local Walmart one evening, Ben and Jesse return to find the motel room so cold that for a moment Jesse wonders if there's a ghost—until he sees that the AC unit is turned on full blast. Claire is in the shower, which wouldn't be unusual except that she was also in the shower when they left more than an hour ago. It's the first time Jesse's known her to take longer than strictly necessary to do anything.

"What is she _doing_?" Ben mutters, dropping his bags on the table and going to knock on the bathroom door. "Yo, Claire! You alive in there?"

"Occupied," comes Claire's clipped voice. She doesn't sound like there's anything wrong, but then, she never does.

Ben gives Jesse a troubled look. "We brought snacks," he calls, and when that elicits no response, he taps the door again. "Can you wrap this up? I gotta pee."

The water continues unabated, long enough for Ben to sigh and kick off his shoes and start microwaving a Hot Pocket. Jesse perches on the edge of their bed with his bag of chips, pretending to read the obituaries while surreptitiously eyeing the bathroom door. After several minutes, the sound finally cuts off, and a few moments later, Claire emerges.

"All yours," she says. Her hair lies wet and unbraided around her shoulders, which are bare beneath her usual tank top. Ben raises his eyebrows at her, but she just raises an eyebrow back and says, "Didn't you need to pee?"

Ben makes a dissatisfied noise but obediently goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. With a sideways glance towards Jesse, Claire crosses the room and starts browsing through the bags they've brought home.

Tentatively, Jesse gestures at the air conditioner clattering its chill all along his left side. "Hey, d'you mind if I turn this off?"

"Do what you want," says Claire, holding up a fresh orange for inspection. When Jesse doesn't move, she puts it down and adds, "I was hot."

Spring has definitely sprung for most of the country, but here in Wyoming it may as well still be winter. Jesse lets his hair fall over his eyes, pretending to go back to the newspaper as he offers, "Could open a window, if you like."

Without answering, Claire crosses to the air conditioner and turns it off herself. Then, with quick efficient movements, she braids her hair back into its usual long plait and pulls out her duffel bag.

"Have you ever braided your hair, Jesse?" says Ben right beside him, and Jesse jumps. No fire this time, thank goodness, but he is badly unprepared for Ben rumpling the back of his head before giving it a genial shove. "What do you think, Claire? Pigtails?"

She turns to look at the pair of them over her shoulder. "He can do whatever he wants as long as he doesn't grow a beard," she retorts, and Ben breaks into an enormous grin. Claire's spine relaxes by the smallest fraction. Just like that, it seems the argument they didn't have is settled, at least for now.

"Hey, maybe I look good with a beard," Jesse puts in, despite intimate knowledge of the scruffy patchwork that emerges from his cheeks if he doesn't shave. "Regal. Parliamentary, even."

"I think you hide behind your hair enough as it is," says Claire lightly, back to rifling through clothing. Jesse begins to duck his head, then flushes when he realizes he's doing exactly that.

"Your bangs are getting pretty long," Ben muses at his side. "Dean says it's never a good idea to have hair in your face when you're trying to shoot a monster. Not that Sam listens to him, of course."

Jesse scratches just above his ear, uncomfortable yet oddly pleased at the shift in their attention. "It's such a pain to cut, though. Dulls my knife something awful."

There's a pause, in which Ben and Claire both give him the exact same expression. "You cut your hair with a _knife_?" says Ben.

"I was in the desert!" Jesse says. "Look, it wasn't the prettiest job, but it was enough to stop the wind always catching it."

"I'm giving you a haircut right now," Ben decides. "With scissors. Come over here."

"Oh, you're a barber now?" Jesse isn't completely against the idea, actually, which may have something to do with how his scalp still feels warm where Ben ruffled it. He's trying not to think too hard about that.

Ben waggles a pair of scissors that he's liberated from the med kit. "I am _excellent_ at cutting hair."

"Leave him alone, Ben," says Claire, joining them by the doorway once more. "Just because that sentence didn't set off my lie detector doesn't mean it's true. Where are the truck keys?"

"I've got them." Ben fishes into his pocket, jingling, but he gives Claire's bag a long look while he does so. "Where're you going?"

"Laundry's piling up," she replies briskly. "And you're welcome for dealing with Jesse's dirty socks. Don't wait up." She plucks the keys from Ben's hand, hoists her duffel, and is out the door before either of them have a chance to respond, leaving only cold air in her wake.

It is still very chilly in this room. Ben gives a few empty snips of his scissors, chewing his lip, and then says to Jesse, "I was just kidding. I'm not gonna make you get a haircut."

"No, it's—it's fine." Jesse clears his throat. "I mean, it _is_ getting pretty long. I wouldn't mind a trim, to be honest."

Ben opens and closes the scissors again, a little _you sure?_ gesture that Jesse is so pleased to interpret—it's not just Ben and Claire that can have silent conversations with their eyebrows. He shakes his head back and forth like a dog until his eyes are almost fully covered, then blows with his bottom lip to make the hair flutter away. Ben laughs.

"All right, then," Ben says. "Go stick your head under the shower and grab the trashcan. One haircut coming right up."

Ben is tactile in much the way Oliver was: friendly, fraternal, heavy enough on the roughhousing to preserve everyone's dignity. After three years in the desert, Jesse often finds himself drifting closer without meaning to, torn between his dangerously sulfuric startle response and the rush of relief when Ben nudges his elbow or rests a hand on his shoulder. He hadn't realized how desperate he was for human contact until he started receiving it again, and even these small gestures make him feel—sensitive.

Oliver never offered to cut Jesse's hair.

"Sit," Ben commands, once Jesse has given his own head a perfunctory scrub and re-emerged dripping. "And we will do our best to aim into the trash."

Jesse sits. "I see how it is," he says, handing over the comb. "Haircutting skills are you, but when it comes to the mess, it's suddenly _we_."

"Barber picks the music, baby," says Ben, and forestalls the next riposte by tugging at Jesse's hoodie. "Speaking of mess, you should take this off too, unless you wanna be finding little poky hairs in it for the rest of your life."

"It's freezing in here," Jesse complains, but he works his arms out of the sleeves nevertheless; this sweatshirt is the only one he has. He extricates his head in time to see Ben glance at the door as though waiting for Claire to step back through it. "Is that—does she do this often, with the air conditioner?"

"No," says Ben, frowning. "I mean, I know she doesn't like wearing coats, but this is new."

 _Is it because of me?_ Jesse doesn't ask. He still hasn't figured out how he un-broke Claire's arm, and it's all too easy to imagine how his hellfire might affect a non-cambion human body. He leans his head back over the trashcan, throat bare in repentance.

"I feel like she's been acting weird a lot lately," Ben continues, running his fingers through Jesse's damp hair. "Ever since Purgatory. She kept ahold of herself better than we did in there, but I wonder if there's something from that place that like...lingered."

"The river?" Jesse's eyes are closed tight, and behind them he sees that black ichor rising up to swallow them, the seductive voices and sharp teeth. He shivers as Ben cuts away the first lock of hair.

"Maybe." Another snip. "It's hard to tell with Claire. Sometimes I think I've got her halfway figured out, and then other times it's like we're not even speaking the same language."

"Literally," Jesse mutters, thinking of the burning syllables that tumbled from Claire's mouth when she first told him about Castiel.

"There is that," Ben agrees. He tilts Jesse forward a little bit, cupping the back of his head. For a while the only sound is the scissors and soft patter of hair falling into the bin. Quieter, half to himself, Ben adds, "She wants to protect people. Much as she can't stand to be in a room with them, she's trying to keep them safe. I just worry that—that she doesn't care what happens to herself."

Jesse opens his eyes, and finds Ben's face closer than he expected, hovering upside down above his own. Even from this angle there's no mistaking the worry in his voice, the conviction in his eyes—the fierce protectiveness radiating from his entire body that Jesse has seen time and time again whenever the two humans stand between monsters and the rest of the world. Ben has never been one to hide his emotions, and this is one of the strongest he has.

 _Call it what it is,_ Jesse tells himself. _He's in love with her._

The thought shouldn't hurt the way it does. It's not like this is a revelation; relationship status aside, Jesse could tell Ben loved Claire from the moment he saw them together. It's just something he managed to ignore, more or less, something so inextricable from their whole dynamic that he could pretend it was irrelevant and not examine why he was so keen to cast that knowledge aside. It's only now, with Ben gently touching his head and talking about Claire, that Jesse feels his protective ignorance lanced through with the truth.

"She's strong," Jesse says after another long pause. His voice sounds rough to his own ears, and he closes his eyes again. "Claire is...she can take care of herself. She knows what she's doing."

"Maybe she shouldn't always have to," says Ben.

It's the haircut's own moment of truth now: Ben lifts the hair off Jesse's forehead and starts to cut away the parts he hides behind. His hands are as steady now as they are on his gun. They breathe in sync, just these few moments, and then Ben brushes the stray hairs off Jesse's cheek and says, "There. Much better."

When Jesse opens his eyes this time, Ben is smiling straight at him. Like the stupid optimistic thing it is, Jesse's heart flutters.

"I'll have you know," he says, "that if you made me look barmy, I know where you sleep."

Ben bonks him on the head with the comb, grinning. "Watch it, bud, or I'll dye it hot pink next time."

Jesse gets to his feet, a little light-headed, and goes to look at himself in the mirror. Somewhat to his surprise, Ben really did do a good job—the hair is out of his eyes, and cleaner around the sides and neck, but Jesse still looks like himself. He ducks his head forward and meets his own eyes. "Maybe you've got a backup career if the hunting doesn't work out after all."

"A trim a day keeps the Wolfman away," Ben sing-songs, returning the trash can to its place beside the bathtub. "And look, we didn't even make too much of a mess."

Jesse _feels_ like a mess, but he keeps that to himself. He can see Ben giving him an approving look in the mirror, and he can also see how his own ears go a little red when they meet eyes in the reflection. "It's good," he fumbles, trying to sound casual. "Seriously. Cheers, mate."

"Cheers, mate," Ben echoes with a laugh. His accent is terrible; Jesse adores it. "Of course, dude. Anytime."

There's more Jesse wants to say—how he appreciates Ben's urge to take care of the people around him, how these small accommodations to keep his friends comfortable do not go unnoticed. How Claire appreciates it too, even if Ben can't see it. How lucky Jesse is to be counted among those worthy of Ben's kindness.

Instead he says, "Let's see what's on TV," and lets Ben enthuse about Jurassic Park until the evening slides into night.

* * *

Jesse Turner has been known to fall asleep just about anywhere—rocks, floors, kitchen tables, you name it. But between having Ben cut his hair so gently and watching a whole movie alone with him and the substandard size of this bed, he's currently having some trouble getting himself calmed down enough to doze off.

Normally Jesse would move to the truck to solve this problem, but tonight the truck is still gone, and the other bed in the motel room lies empty. Ben got a text from Claire just before midnight that made his face go _very_ red when he told Jesse they probably shouldn't expect her back that night.

Jesse could sleep in Claire's bed, if she won't be needing it. But it feels invasive to climb in without asking, to slide between the sheets where she slept last night, to maybe catch from her pillow the scent of her hair, and if she came back unexpectedly and found him there—

Bad enough to lie awake thinking about Ben. Worse to lie awake thinking of Claire.

 _Stop_ , Jesse orders himself sternly, but if it was that easy he'd already be asleep. He lets out a long sigh through his nose.

He is so fucked.

Despite all signs to the contrary, Jesse is no fool. He knows he trusts too easily, falls too fast and too hard and doesn't always see the danger until it's too late. And he tried _so hard_ not to do this. But in spite of himself he's been basking in their attention, Ben's and Claire's both, going out of his way to make stupid jokes to see them smile. His powers have decided that these hunters count as _safe_. They're the first people who've shown Jesse any real kindness or respect, let alone wanted him around, ever since—

It's a bad business, falling for hunters. Jesse thought he learned that lesson already.

Two in the morning has come and gone when Jesse finally breaks. Truck or no truck, he needs to get himself outside. He slips out of bed and sticks a pack of smokes in the pocket of his sweater on his way out.

The cold day has become an even colder night, and Jesse heads behind the building for the relative windbreak of the outdoor pool area. He ignores the _NO SMOKING_ sign and swings himself up and over the padlocked gate keeping the pool closed after dark. "Parkour," he whispers to himself.

The air smells like chlorine, but that's fine by him. Jesse lies down on the concrete right next to the pool's edge, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. He counts as he holds that first breath—one, two, three, four—and drops his other hand down to skim the surface of the frigid water. He lets out a smoky breath, listens to the distant sounds of traffic, and thinks he might actually get to sleep before sunrise after all.

But Jesse's solitude doesn't last long.

He almost doesn't hear the footsteps approaching the fence in time, and when he does, it's a mad scramble to stub out his cigarette and duck behind a pile of lawn chairs before anyone sees him. Fuck, he's going to get in trouble, he's going to get them kicked out of this hotel and then _no one_ will get any sleep—except when he risks a peek at whoever just rattled the gate, he sees Claire Novak.

Jesse frowns. She's finally back—with the truck, he hopes—even though Ben was certain she wouldn't turn up until tomorrow morning. What in the world is she doing out here?

Claire walks with purpose directly towards the water. Jesse is about to stand up and call out to her when Claire reaches the edge, steps right into the deep end, and vanishes under a stream of bubbles.

"What," Jesse says aloud. He feels a little like he's gone off the deep end himself. "Claire?"

Claire, of course, can't hear him, and in the dark it's hard to make out where under the water she might be. Jesse leaves his hiding place and takes two hesitant steps forward. That water is _freezing_ , and she isn't coming out—

Then Claire bursts through the surface near the shallow end, and Jesse startles so badly he reignites his cigarette.

" _Fuck_ you," she snarls, and it takes Jesse several terrifying moments to realize she's not speaking to him, that this vitriol is aimed at the empty sky. "You lying piece of shit, did you do this on purpose? Was watching my mother die not enough for you? Is my _father's body_ not _enough_?"

Oh. Oh shit.

Claire is praying. To _Castiel_.

Jesse has neither seen nor heard anything of Castiel since the fight in Centralia, and for all Ben's enthusiasm about having Sam and Dean back, no one ever mentions the Winchesters' celestial friend. Neither of them could forget the look on Claire's face when she shot the angel inside her father point blank, both barrels, and watched the bullets do nothing to him. Jesse has never seen panic like the moment Claire realized the symbols hiding her from Castiel were broken. He doesn't know what she's angry about now, but he knows this is absolutely not for him to see.

"I'm going to tell Aaron where you are," Claire breathes. Her hair has come unbraided, streaming behind her like a cloak. "He's going to cut you to pieces and I'm going to _watch_."

Cautiously, so cautiously, Jesse takes a step towards the fence.

For all the danger they've endured in their months together, Jesse has never once seen Claire startle like she does now. She throws both her hands up from the water and shouts something, something in the language that _burns_ , and then she sees who it is. Her face twists and she lets her outstretched arms fall.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here, Jesse?"

"Nothing," he says stupidly, and winces at the flash of pain that crosses her face at the lie. "I mean, I couldn't sleep, the truck was gone and normally I'd go there but I just wanted to have a smoke, really, I thought you weren't going to be back until morning?"

"Fuck," Claire says again, and drags her hands down her face. She's a little calmer when she reappears, that uncharacteristic wrath going cold and silent again, but she pushes herself towards the edge of the pool and climbs out. All she's wearing is a tank top and some sweatpants, both soaking wet in the chilled breeze, but she's not shivering. Jesse looks away.

"Are you all right?"

Claire doesn't answer. There's the sound of water being wrung out against the pavement, and then a few wet footsteps. It was, admittedly, a stupid question.

"I'm sorry," Jesse says, quieter. "I know you didn't—didn't mean for me to hear that."

Somewhere out in the distance, a train whistle blows. "I lost my cool," Claire says eventually. "Quite literally. I needed to be somewhere cold or I was going to explode." Her eyes dart toward the fence, and Jesse is ready for that to be the end of the conversation, but for some reason she pushes the hair back from her face and says, "You might as well ask now."

She told him once that Castiel had asked for her body as well as her father's. Claire, in that moment, had spoken of angels and said _we_. He can't make her tell that story again.

Instead, Jesse asks: "Who's Aaron?"

Claire meets his eyes, taken aback, and her voice is a little less stilted when she speaks again. "He's a friend," she says. "Mostly. He hunts angels."

Now there's a fear that hadn't occurred to Jesse before—he gets nervous enough around regular hunters, let alone one with enough strength to go up against soldiers of Heaven. "Angels? Plural?"

An unpleasant sort of smile creeps across Claire's face. "He has a sword that can kill them."

Jesse decides that this Aaron person is someone he _never_ wants to meet.

"For...various reasons," Claire continues, "Ben thinks I should tell Aaron that Castiel is back. But I—" She gestures at the pool. "Empty threats aside, I don't want him to know. Castiel is my problem, and I'll deal with him myself."

What would have happened, Jesse wonders, if Claire had had an angel-killing sword when they emerged from Purgatory? It's clear she wanted to end Castiel that day, no hesitation when she shot him or followed it up with her fists. Castiel would be dead, simple as that. But later that same fight, Claire had taken a terrible injury to save Ben; an injury that left her bleeding out in the backseat of the Impala while the rest of them tried and failed to find safe passage through the sea of ghosts. It was Castiel who healed her that day, whatever his own motivations were. If Claire had succeeded in killing the angel, he would have been unable to save her.

Maybe, to Claire, dying would have been worth it.

"Why would—" Jesse begins, then clears his throat and starts again. "Do you know where he is, though? Castiel?"

A droplet of water runs down Claire's chin and hits the ground while she watches him, unmoving. "I have a question for you," she says. "When you healed my arm, did you feel anything?"

Jesse blinks. "I mean, I felt my arm break," he says, lost at this change of topic. "I guess it felt like there was...electricity, somehow? Something that reacted to my powers." He's gotten so used to Claire's presence that it hardly registers anymore, but there is still a faint knot of something glowing inside her ribcage, which he attempts to indicate without actually looking anywhere below her eyes. "That's your lie detector, right?"

"It's a bit more sophisticated than a polygraph," Claire says dryly, but her face returns to seriousness soon after. "That's a part of him. Grace, the stuff angels are made of. He left it behind when he left me."

Whatever expression he's making right now cannot possibly do justice to the gravity of that knowledge. Jesse has adapted well enough to the fact that Claire can call him out on anything that's not true, has adjusted his jokes and offhand comments accordingly, but he had no idea that she spent every day living with that reminder of the worst day of her life.

"Well, shit," he exhales. "Why _don't_ you let Aaron kill him?"

Claire just laughs, a sad and private thing. "Come on. We should go back inside." She sets off towards the gate, then pauses when Jesse doesn't follow immediately. "Unless you don't want to?"

Jesse fiddles with his box of cigarettes. Claire understands things in a way Ben doesn't, sometimes, and she's told him so much of herself tonight that he finds himself wanting to return the favor. "Can I, um. Can I tell you something?"

Claire steps back in his direction, eyes sharp. "Of course."

"I know I say I'm afraid," Jesse blurts out in a rush. "And that's true, you'd know if I was lying, but the truth is I'm not just scared of hunters or demons or enclosed spaces. I'm scared of what I'm going to do." He finds he can't look at her, staring instead at the light rippling across the pool. "Ever since Meg I've been having these moments when I—I don't know myself anymore. I get roughed up by a monster or someone bumps into me on the street and suddenly I'm so angry I feel like I could tear the whole universe apart and still not be satisfied."

"That's not you," Claire says, and she sounds so fucking sure. "Your powers can howl for blood all they want, but you're stronger than they are."

He lowers his head, and whispers the question he's been asking himself since Centralia. "What if I'm not?"

"Jesse." She steps sideways, bare feet still dripping, until he has no choice but to meet her eyes. "Hell itself built you to be a weapon of destruction, but from the day we met I've only ever seen you try to do good."

The warmth that blooms in his chest at those words is better than any salacious fantasy he could possibly dream up. "I destroy things all the time," Jesse protests, half-laughing and weak with gratitude. "I call down lightning from the sky by accident and set fire to our towels."

"Your powers aren't _you_ ," Claire says. "I won't tell you they're not a burden and yeah, sometimes they go on the fritz. But it's been—better since you came." Now she's the one to look away, fidgeting with her hands. "It's nice to have someone else's perspective on things. And you keep Ben company. He's less lonely than he was with just me."

Jesse has been thinking of Ben and Claire as a unit for so long that it never occurred to him he might be giving them something they didn't have in each other. In a small, wondering voice, Jesse says, "Oh."

"So it's better that you're here," she finishes. "Powers and all. You're our friend."

 _Friend_. Two hunters, two people who know who he is and where he came from, and they're still offering this. Forget whatever stupid crushes Jesse has, forget the daydreams—this, just this, is more precious than he could have ever hoped for. "I'm," he says, and hopes she can't hear the wobble. "I'm glad."

Claire nods once, decisive. "Now: I'm going to bed." She hasn't dried off, and she didn't really answer the question of why she was so angry at Castiel, but like hell is Jesse going to call her on that now. "The truck's parked out front if you want it."

"Thank you," he says, meaning the truck, meaning everything. Claire nods again, and as swiftly as she arrived, she leaves Jesse alone again.

Except, well. He's not really alone anymore, now, is he?


	4. Talking in your sleep.

_Heat presses around you on every side, embers stinging your skin, smoke choking you and making your eyes burn. The fire is everywhere, inescapable, and you fight and you fight but still you can't get free—_

_Someone says your name._

_There is nothing you can do. There is too much fire and you cannot, cannot stand against it. It will consume you._

_You want, with a sudden and crushing terror, to be anywhere but here. You flee._

_But it does not matter how fast you run or how many miles of scorching sand you put behind you; there is no escaping the screams, the burning bodies, the stink of charred flesh, the sun beating down—_

Wait.

Jesse slows to a halt, lowering his hands from his ears. He blinks the sand out of his eyes as he catches his breath, squinting against the sun. The sun...it was night when he left the Simms family burning behind him. And that was—yes, years ago. He's with Ben and Claire now. This is just another nightmare.

He lets out a breath of relief, but a moment passes, then two. Aren't you supposed to wake up once you realize you're dreaming? He looks around, cautious, and sees an unfamiliar set of mountains rising above the scrub and yellow sand. This is a desert, yes, but it doesn't look like _his_ desert.

There's a column of smoke in the distance. The shack? He takes a step back, afraid, but like a camera lens zooming in it rushes towards him, bringing back the screaming and the smell of burning bodies with it.

Jesse's in the middle of an ancient city square—like the ruins he used to see in history magazines, but whole instead of crumbling, and swarming with living people. Jesse drifts past robed men with full beards and women with their heads covered in cloth. The crowd isn't screaming in pain as he feared: they're jeering, the language unfamiliar but the tone unmistakeable, at three bodies up on a wooden platform. The corpses are lashed to their poles and still smoldering from the fire that ended their lives.

A single woman stands back away from the crowd, silent, her curly dark hair catching in the wind as she gazes upon the charred corpses. Jesse feels a phantom tug at the nape of his neck, and he takes a step towards her, shielding his eyes from the sun. She looks so different like this that he almost can't recognize her—but there are some people you never forget.

" _Meg?_ "

Gone are the combat boots and leather jacket, the heavy makeup and the yellow eyes. This _is_ Meg, in the same body he met outside the diner in Nebraska, but here she's dressed like all the rest of them, a simple linen dress covered by a heavier robe that flutters behind her. Unlike the other women, her hair is uncovered and her feet are bare. He realizes for the first time that Meg is shorter than he is, and that's when it hits him: this isn't the Queen of Hell, looking so lost and so small. He made her human, and this is all she is now.

Meg sees Jesse, and the noise of the crowd vanishes like someone flipped a switch. "בני?"

"I can't understand you," Jesse says, somewhat petulant and thoroughly unnerved. The people in the crowd, in fact the entire city, are no longer quite solid around them; it's just him and Meg that are real. He grits his teeth. "What are you doing in my head?"

"Your head," Meg repeats, in English this time. " _Your_ head?" She waves an arm at the ancient city, the bodies on their pyres. "Are you telling me _you_ remember the siege of Samaria?"

Of course. This isn't his desert, because it's not his dream.

"You took away my power to get into your head, Jesse Turner," Meg whispers. "You came into _mine_."

There is a long silence, broken only by the howling of the wind. Jesse hesitates, glancing back at the bodies. "Then—then this is—"

"Me," Meg says, with a gesture to the rightmost corpse, the smallest. "And my brother," she says of the left body, "and my father, who got us into this mess nearly three thousand years ago."

Jesse's eyes widen, and he looks around the city with new eyes. He knew she must be old: all demons are, aren't they? But he didn't realize she was _biblical_.

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to picture the motel room he fell asleep in. Nothing happens. "I want to wake up now," he says, hoping his subconscious will get the hint.

Meg laughs. "If you wanted to wake up, you'd be awake. Whether you admit it or not, you sought me out." She gives a deep bow, her eyes never leaving his. "Tell me, cambion: what can this lowly human do for you?"

"You can't give me anything," Jesse says, feeling fire surge up in his chest in reminder. There's nothing left of the bond he severed—he's already taken all she had.

"Is that so?" She sidles closer to him, regaining some of that swagger he remembers. "Nothing left you wanted to say? No...questions you want answered?"

Jesse _hates_ her. Her sarcasm, her smugness, her refusal to stay out of his life after he so soundly defeated her. But deep, deep down, he knows she's the only one who can tell him the thing he most needs to know. Maybe he left her alive only for this.

"At Purgatory's Gate," he says, wishing so much that he had Claire to hear this too. "What you said about my parents. Were you lying?"

Meg lets out her breath, the sideways grin fading. "The Turners _were_ hunters," she says. "I promise you. You're safer with them gone."

"They're my _parents!"_ Jesse yells, furious, and a scorching wind races through the phantasmal square, whipping Meg's face. She looks up at him unmoved.

"It wasn't easy to undo your wish to be forgotten, Jesse," she says. "As soon as I remembered you, I went back to that house in Nebraska where I lost you before. I kept watch. And you know what I saw?" She stabs a finger into Jesse's chest, and powerless as he knows she is, he still takes a step back. "The Turners had salt lines on every window and every door. They exorcised the demon I sent to investigate and never blinked. There were devil's traps drawn in that house long before I got there. What do you think would have happened if they found out what you were?"

"Shut up," Jesse whispers. It's every question he's been trying not to ask himself.

"You were more vulnerable in that house than you ever were with _Oliver Simms_ ," Meg spits. "If it Castiel hadn't shown up looking for me I would have dragged their souls to Hell too, just like that whole pathetic family."

Her words cut into Jesse as painfully as any knife. He hadn't even considered she might have taken his parents too, and now he's perversely grateful to know that their suffering ended with death. But Oliver— "They didn't deserve that," he says. "You had no right."

Meg draws herself up with such righteous indignation that for one disorienting moment Jesse is reminded of Ben. "They were torturing you! You, the most powerful creature on Earth, trapped and chained and made to suffer like some common animal!"

"And they died!" Jesse yells. "You don't think that was enough, being burned alive in a cambion's hellstorm—God, what am I saying, of course you don't." Jesse bares his teeth. "You're so full of shit, you know that? You weren't protecting me, you were just satisfying yourself! It was cruel and violent and pointless, and I've got to live with it _forever_ and you don't even _care_."

"I care about _you_ ," Meg snaps. Jesse scoffs, and she adds, "You don't think so? You have no idea what I've given up for you, Jesse, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. When I found out what the Turners were, yes, I was furious at them for their deception. Why would I think you wouldn't be angry too? How can you blame me for protecting my only son?"

"I loved them," Jesse insists, throat tight. "No matter what they did or what they were." He didn't realize until he said it that it's true: he only left them to keep them safe, even if it amounted to nothing in the end. He loved them, and loves them still, in the unconditional way he thought they loved him.

"They would have betrayed you," Meg whispers. "Just like Oliver. It's what hunters do."

Jesse looks away, through the haze of a city long forgotten. "Not like you, right?"

She reaches out to touch his arm. "If I had known how much it would hurt you," she says, "I would have stayed my hand. Because I love you."

Jesse draws back from her. "You're sick."

"I'm _sorry_ ," Meg says, and there's real regret in her tone. "I don't expect you to believe that, but I need you to hear me say it."

Jesse shakes his head. He's always trusted too easily, been too quick to forgive, but he can't be, not this time. Oliver and Elias are burning in Hell and his mom and dad are _dead_ because of the person before him. "Sorry can't help me."

Meg regards him, dark hair blowing in the desert wind. "I don't suppose it does," she says after a moment, and steps right up into his personal space, running a hand down his side. "But maybe I can make it up to you."

"What do—why are you _like this_ ," Jesse shouts, red to the tips of his ears, and Meg backs away laughing.

"You make the cutest expressions, bubbeleh. And everyone's easier to steal from when they're flustered." She holds up the cell phone that was in Jesse's pocket and grins.

"Give that back."

"Just a sec." Meg types quickly on the screen—apparently she knows his passcode, because of course she does—and then tosses the phone back to Jesse. "Now we can avoid these delightful dreamscapes and talk like real people do."

There's a new contact listed on the screen: no name, just a winky kiss emoji. Jesse sets his jaw. "I don't want to talk to you."

"I think it's pretty obvious that's not true," says Meg, waving at the scene from her subconscious that Jesse invited himself into. "I may not be the Queen of Hell anymore, but I've still got some tricks up my sleeve. If you still have questions about your parents, I'll find out whatever you need to know."

He wants to tell her no, wants to forget about the whole thing, but she's right: if he didn't need answers so badly, he would already be awake. "Doing this won't make me forgive you," he warns. "I will _never_ forgive you."

Meg shrugs, the hint of something rueful in her smile. "Hey, a girl's gotta have a hobby. I've been a little aimless since you stuck me in this form. This is just—a reason to get up in the morning." Sand begins to swirl around her feet, and she looks up at her own long-dead body. "And there's my cue to go."

"Wait!" Jesse says, as the wind begins howling in earnest, the sand obscuring her face from him. "What am I supposed to tell Ben and Claire?"

Meg laughs again. "Who says you have to tell them anything at all?"

* * *

Jesse wakes with his heart pounding and his phone buzzing on the bedside table. He scrambles for it and sees a new message from a winky kiss emoji.

_I'll let you know when I find something. Sweet dreams. xoxo_

"I hate her," Jesse declares to the silent room.

"Jess?" Ben mumbles from the other side of the bed, making him jump and hide the phone. "You okay?"

Jesse can't tell Ben about this. How could he possibly explain it? Why even try? Any hunter worth their salt would tell him the obvious truth: Meg is manipulating him again and she can't be trusted. And Jesse _doesn't_ —but Ben and Claire can't understand what it's like, not knowing if the people who raised you ever loved you at all. If Meg really can tell him the answer to that, it's worth putting up with her a while longer.

"Yeah," Jesse lies, thankful Claire isn't awake to hear it. "Yeah—I'm just fine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation of the Hebrew in this chapter: "בני?" = "My son?"


	5. Bringing your nightmares to life.

The weeks pass, and the hunts continue. They make their way east. Jesse is half dozing, half listening to Ben fiddle with the radio when he first catches the scent of saltwater on the breeze. Immediately he's awake, for once brimming with excitement instead of fear as he climbs halfway over Ben's lap to try and see the shoreline.

"Dude," says Ben, though he lets Jesse squash him into the window with little resistance. "You're like a dog that just saw another dog, man, what are you doing?"

"Should I pull over?" Claire asks from the driver's side, but Jesse isn't listening.

"I see it," he whispers, grin breaking across his face. Between the cypress trees and tangling vines, beyond flashes of white sand, he can see the ocean.

Most of Jesse's life has been about running away—from his destiny, from collateral damage, from the Simmses and from the Queen of Hell. When he fled into that desert three years ago, he didn't care where he was going as long as it was far, far away from the nightmare he had just escaped. But after he finally collapsed into the red dirt, alone but for the stars above him, he realized something that kept him going through all the loneliness and heartache to come: _the wilderness is stronger than him_.

The ocean is vast; the ocean is deep. The ocean once saw a young Jesse Turner paddling on a salvaged surfboard and didn't care if he was a cambion; its waves crashed over his head and spit him back out like he was nothing. No matter how much hellfire he holds, to the sea, he's just like everybody else.

"This is the happiest I've ever seen you," Ben remarks after a moment, clearly amused. He jostles Jesse's shoulder a little. "Come on, you can't tell me you lived in Australia all that time and never saw the ocean!"

"I've never seen the Atlantic before," Jesse retorts. "That's what this is, right? Does Florida have two oceans?"

"Florida has the Everglades," says Claire, and she does slow the truck as they come to a bridge, letting Jesse look his fill at the brackish water running beneath them. "Hence our friend Florida Man, who claims Injuries Caused By Swamp Monster. See any gators?"

"The article _clearly_ describes a humanoid figure covered in plant matter," says Ben, affronted.

"Sorry if I don't think Florida Man is a reliable source, Ben."

Jesse tunes them out again. The water here is muddy, true, and there are more trees growing out of it than he expected, but it's still like meeting an old friend. He hasn't felt this free since he climbed the mountains of Colorado.

"Creature from the black lagoon is going _down_ ," declares Ben. "And after we kill it, we can go to Disneyland!"

Despite Claire's misgivings, there does turn out to be a real hunt here: Florida Man, whose name is Nyle, shows them a blurry phone video of the thing that nearly took off his leg, and it's clearly no alligator. As soon as the sun sets that evening, Jesse finds himself knee-deep in dirty swamp water, trying his damnedest to spot the glowing eyes of something called a sahuagin. The noise of the frogs alone is near-deafening. Add to that the sticky humid air and ever-present whine of mosquitoes, and they're in for a long night.

Jesse finds himself a lot less enthusiastic about the water once their hunt begins. Dread creeps up on him before he understands why, until Ben momentarily loses his footing and the whole scene is abruptly overlaid with another: Oliver, slipping sideways into the billabong, with a bunyip bearing down on him and flames at Jesse's fingers. Everything from the smell of wet vegetation to the elusiveness of their amphibious quarry is uncomfortably close to Jesse's last hunt with the Simms brothers, and he realizes his hands are shaking because he's terrified of this adventure ending the same way.

 _Ben and Claire already know what you are,_ Jesse tells himself, squeezing his flashlight until the plastic creaks. _They saw you unleash Purgatory and haven't strung you up yet. It's not the same._ Even so, he's grateful to be holding his knife. Your weapon is a part of you, that's what Oliver and Elias always told him, and if Jesse had learned that lesson the first time around maybe he could have saved Oliver the human way and they would never have known. He's not going to let that happen again.

"Stop splashing so loud," whispers Claire from up ahead. "I thought I heard something."

"It's not my fault I can't see the bottom through this muck," Ben hisses back, and she whacks him with her shotgun. "Ow!"

Jesse's heartbeat goes triple time as he turns in the direction Claire's looking, straining to make out anything above the buzz of cicadas. His light shows nothing. Then, almost imperceptible, he hears a gentle swish in the water just to his right.

"Guys," he begins, but he doesn't get a chance to say more before a dark shape lunges out from the cypress roots and tackles Ben into the water.

Claire takes a shot, piercingly loud against the shrill of the frogs, and Jesse clamps down on his powers so hard he nearly makes himself dizzy. It's impossible to tell if she hit anything under the thrashing surface. He throws himself forward instead, knife in hand, striking blind towards the dark shape that took Ben. To his shock, the blade catches on something—slippery but tough at the same time, like the roots of the trees around them—and then the thing twists and Jesse's knife is ripped out of his grasp. Ben staggers upright a moment later, swearing and coughing up swamp water, and quick as it came the sahuagin disappears again.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," Ben sputters, wiping mud out of his eyes. "Well, my gun's fucking useless now, thanks for that." He shoves the waterlogged pistol into his belt and pulls out a machete instead, which does absolutely nothing to ease Jesse's nerves. "Where'd that bastard go?"

"I lost my knife," says Jesse blankly. He's been carrying the same knife in his pockets since the second week of his desert exile, stolen from a supply store at the edge of the outback, and maybe it wasn't the best tool but at least he controlled it with his own two hands. That knife made it out of a hellhound fight unscathed, and he kept its blade sharp so his powers wouldn't have to be. What is he supposed to do now?

Claire sweeps her flashlight up and down his wet, bedraggled body. "You know you don't need a knife."

Jesse hunches, unable to explain why he actually needs a knife quite badly if he's going to keep himself in check. "I want it," he mumbles, and leans down to feel through the mud for its familiar shape.

From under the water, something slimy and cold wraps itself around Jesse's wrist and pulls.

The power of large bodies of water is wonderful when Jesse wants to feel like a normal human being, but it's less good when long scaly fingers are holding his head underwater. Immortal he may be, but drowning _hurts_ , salt and silt filling up his lungs as he coughs and chokes and tries to wrestle away. He hears another shotgun blast from above, muffled by the dark water, and that gives him a brief window to break the surface—"Burn it, Jesse!" comes Ben's voice—and then he's submerged again.

 _Burn it, Jesse,_ except the sparks popping in his vision look a lot more like the merciless eyes of the Simms family holding him down in a basin of holy water, watching him thrash and waiting for him to die. Jesse never dies. He can't let the fire take him over again, he won't, he just needs his fucking _knife—_

There's a solid wooden handle under his fingertips.

Jesse doesn't question it, relief pouring through his body like the fire wouldn't. The knife fits in his hand as well as it ever has, and he slashes deep into the sahuagin's underbelly, ripping through vines and scales to the fleshy parts beneath. It sinks its fangs into Jesse's arm in retaliation but he holds on, pushing the blade through bone and viscera, splitting the monster from navel to neck. Blood pours out of the monster and his lungs fill with that too. Finally, finally, the sahuagin stops moving, and then he feels hands on his shoulders bringing him back to the world.

"Jesse! Shit, are you okay?" Ben pounds him on the back, hauling Jesse upright with the other arm.

Jesse's lungs are so full of water he can't even draw breath to cough. A human would probably die from this. Jesse just turns his head and heaves, stomach clenching painfully as his body rids itself of all the swamp he swallowed down. Claire hovers just beyond him, hand on her gun.

"You should get him back to shore," she says, eyeing the dark swamp and even-darker patch of blood. "Is that thing going to get up again?"

Jesse heaves one last time, but it seems his lungs are finally empty. "It's dead," he rasps. "I cut it in half."

Claire pauses. "With what?"

Confused, Jesse shows her his knife. She holds up an identical copy.

"You said you wanted it back," she begins, and Jesse can see that she's holding the knife he dropped, a little dinged up from its journey through the swamp—but then what is he holding? He looks down at the hilt that felt so familiar when he needed it most, and the image of the knife ripples across his palm and disappears.

Ben stares between the two of them. " _Dude_. Did you magic up a second knife?"

Jesse pulls away, badly shaken. He hasn't willed something to appear out of nothing in a long time, not since he was too young to know better, and it worries him how easily his own mind fooled him. "I just," he stammers, looking from the knife to Claire to the machete at Ben's hip. "That doesn't normally happen, I was just—really focused, I guess? I needed it, so it came. Sort of."

"Can you do that with some burgers?" Ben jokes, but then he sees Jesse's face and grows concerned. "Hey, you're okay. Take a breath, you almost drowned."

Claire flips the real knife hilt-first and offers it to Jesse. "You keep saying you need it," she notes. "Pass if you want to, but: why?"

Jesse does strongly consider saying _pass_ like he's heard them do, the magic word to drop an uncomfortable subject without having to set off Claire's lie detector. As the silence drags on, though, he finds that he wants them to know—to maybe understand, just a little bit, why everything is such a struggle for him.

"Last time I was in a swamp like this was with Oliver and Elias," he says finally. "I was just thinking how, if I had just kept my hand on my weapon like they taught me to, I could've killed that bunyip without them finding out what I am. So." He takes the blade carefully from Claire's outstretched hand.

"I'm sorry I told you you didn't need it, then," she says. It seems for a moment that she wants to say something else, but she holds her peace, and for that Jesse is profoundly grateful.

"Is it—" Ben clears his throat. "How often do you think about them?"

Jesse laughs and tilts his head back. "They were my best friends," he says to the sky. The stars overhead are totally different from the constellations he knew so well in Australia, and he can't decide if that's upsetting or comforting. "They taught me how to hunt monsters, how to fight. I think about them every damn day."

A long moment goes by, broken only by the continued sound of the swampland around them. Eventually Ben says, "Look, I'm sorry this hunt brought up bad stuff for you. But you gotta know—that's not gonna happen with us. If you're in danger, if you're getting hurt, you should use all the fire you want."

Claire adds, more subdued, "You don't have to be afraid of us."

Jesse feels a dangerous prickling at his eyes. "I know," he says, hoping Claire won't call him for a lie.

"Good," Ben says. He pats Jesse on the back. "Friends don't put friends in devil's traps."

"Friends keep paint remover handy just in case," adds Claire, and some of the tension leaves the air as Jesse bursts into giggles. It was horrible, that panic room, and he never wants to be in a place like that again, but Claire's right—he's the idiot who walked into that trap, and she and Ben let him out. No one's ever done something like that for him before. He smiles, a little apology in that wordless language of theirs that Jesse is only just learning to speak, and Claire smiles back. She adds, "My idea, by the way."

"Aw, Claire, everyone knows you're the brains of this operation," says Ben, finally beginning the trek back to dry land. "I'm just here to flex and look pretty." He throws a wink over his shoulder at both of them.

"You don't say," Claire says, catching up with him easily. Jesse hurries to follow. "And what is Jesse for, hm?"

"Jesse?" Ben gives him a hand crawling out of the thick muck. Jesse's expecting some quip about how he could fry any monster he wanted to, but Ben just squeezes his dirty, bloody fingers and says, "Jesse's here to make things a little more fun."

* * *

That night, Jesse dreams of Oliver Simms.

This is neither unexpected nor unusual; Jesse's dreams feature the dead more often than the living. He has nightmares about what the Simms family did to him, of course he does, but most of the time he just dreams about the way things were, harmless memories that leave him wistful on waking. Tonight it's a quiet moment on the south Australia shoreline, watching waves break against a series of stone pillars called the Twelve Apostles. Elias is busy with some errand, so it's just Jesse and Oliver, looking out across the vast darkness of ocean beneath the endless black sky.

_"Have a go," Oliver says, holding out the cigarette in his hand. His mouth doesn't move when he speaks, but there's a sly smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Winfield Blues are the best there is."_

_"That stuff will kill you, you know," says Jesse, though he takes the cigarette anyway. The red ash glows between them as he passes it back._

_"Demons'll get me first," Oliver promises, conspiratorial like he's telling a secret, like he already knows what Jesse does. He takes a long drag, the hot end of the cigarette leaving an afterimage of its path in the dark. "Hunters, we die young. We all die young." The glow of his cigarette gets brighter, and he blows out smoke in the shape of a kiss._

_In his dreams, Jesse is braver than in real life. He leans forward, touches their mouths together, and then he feels a searing heat that starts from the cigarette and travels out faster than he can stop it, consuming them both. When he pulls away Oliver has stopped moving, mouth frozen open, wreathed in flames._

_"Jesse," he whispers, terrified, dying. "Jesse!"_

_Jesse cries out, and the sound gets stuck in his ears on endless loop, louder and louder, until it turns into a high shrieking whine—_

"Jesse!"

Jesse's eyes snap open and he gasps. All the lights in the room are on, and the other side of the bed is empty. He's _freezing_.

"Get up," Ben commands from across the room, pouring salt lines in his pajamas. "We've got company."

Jesse struggles upright, heart still pounding from the dream, confused and frightened. "What's going on? What is that sound?"

"EMF," Claire says. She's up, too, loading shotgun shells into the gun that didn't fall in the swamp. "Congratulations—it seems we've landed two jobs in the same town."

"It _would_ happen in Florida," Ben grouses, tossing the EMF meter onto the bed as he searches through a duffel bag. "This ghost sounds like it's right the fuck on top of us, which means any second now—"

The lights flicker and go out. Dread crawls into Jesse's chest as he stumbles out of bed, limbs feeling clumsy and heavy, breath fogging in the air. A tall, hulking figure materializes out of the shadows on the wall behind Ben and raises something in its hand—a weapon.

A machete.

A frisson of terror, dark and inexorable, rushes up Jesse's spine. He lunges, desperate to stop that wicked blade before it meets Ben's neck, and feels the pain slice into his shoulder instead. That's nothing, his skin is already stitching itself back together, but the impact sends them both sprawling and it takes Jesse a few disorienting seconds to stagger back to his feet. When he finally jerks upright, he comes face-to-face with the ghost.

At first Jesse doesn't recognize him. It's hard to make out any features past the charred exterior: there's an empty space where the ghost's mouth should be, blackened and burned completely away. He sees blond hair, an upturned nose, strong shoulders. But when Jesse meets its eyes—

He knows those eyes. How they looked in the firelight; how they looked as their own light went out. Even after three years, there are some faces you never forget.

A shot goes off, and Jesse flinches full-body as the ghost vanishes in a spray of rock salt. Claire pumps her shotgun and grabs Jesse by the collar, dragging him inside the salt circle that Ben is still trying to finish. "Do you _know_ him?" she demands.

"It's Oliver," says Jesse, pulse rushing in his ears. The name feels numb on his tongue. "Oliver Simms."

The spirit re-emerges in a different corner of the room this time, twisted and terrible in its ashen last moments. Oliver was quick, Jesse remembers, and his ghost is too, dodging out of the way of another salt round as it stalks closer to Claire. She narrows her eyes and fires again, dispatching him for the moment. "Why is he here?"

"Did you keep anything of his?" Ben puts in, hastily loading up his own pistol and taking aim where Oliver disappeared. "A bracelet, a journal, a piece of clothing, anything!"

"There was nothing left!" Jesse cries. Oliver flashes into being right beside him, circling around the edge of the salt line, measured and predatory like every one of his relatives who watched Jesse squirm in the center of a devil's trap. "I burned his body to ashes, you don't understand, there was _nothing!"_

"Ghosts have rules!" Ben retorts, flinging a handful of salt straight from the canister. "Dean says if it's not the body, it's some sort of unfinished business. What would this asshole want?"

Jesse's hands are shaking so badly that tongues of flame are jumping between his fingers. "He wanted me dead," he says, voice cracking. "And if that's true we'll never get rid of him, because guess who can't be killed?"

"But why now?" says Claire. She's poised to attack the next time Oliver appears, but her eyes are on Jesse. "You said he died more than three years ago. What would bring his spirit back right now?"

"You don't understand," Jesse says again. "Meg told me she dragged Oliver to Hell, along with all the rest of his family. His spirit shouldn't even be free to walk the earth. I don't _know."_

The EMF lets out another screech as Ben slowly turns to look at Jesse as well. "No soul can escape from Hell without some serious help," he says. "Did Meg...let him go?"

The idea makes Jesse almost hopeful for a moment, until he remembers the Meg he saw in his dreams: still furious at the Simms clan for harming him, and too human to do anything about it in any case. "She couldn't have," he says, hollow. "This is just another impossible fucking thing that's somehow happening to me."

Ben and Claire exchange looks. Oliver appears again, machete raised high, and Claire shoots him without looking.

"Tulpa?" she says.

"Worth trying," Ben answers.

Jesse has no idea what either of them are talking about. This salt circle feels more like a trap the longer they're stuck inside it. "What's a tulpa?"

"Some creatures exist only because people believe in them," Ben explains, patting himself down. He realizes he's in pajamas a moment later and mutters, "Shit, the iPad's way over there. Dean definitely fought one of these before, I know it."

"Well, how do you get _rid_ of one?" Jesse demands, backing away from the latest manifestation of this...tulpa. He wishes he could look away but he can't, the rage in Oliver's eyes keeps drawing him in, and he has no idea how to satiate it.

"I think it's you," says Claire. "You summoned a knife because you needed to have one. You believe this ghost has come for you, so here it is. He's not real."

Jesse's stomach churns. He remembers how Oliver looked at him in his dream, that hazy moment between sleeping and waking, and now that he's searching for it he can see other memories mixed in as well; those burn scars look more like the ghost they fought in South Carolina than the pile of ashes that Oliver became, and there's even a strange slippery texture to his skin that reminds him of the sahuagin they killed mere hours ago. This is all coming from his own fucked up head.

"Whatever you believe about it, that's what comes true," adds Ben. "I mean, hell, the only reason our salt is even keeping him out is because you think it's supposed to."

The Oliver-tulpa's eyes narrow, like if it had a mouth it would be smiling. Then it drifts forward into their circle and raises the machete.

" _Ben,"_ Claire cries in exasperation, and this time when she shoots through the ghostly form it doesn't dissipate around the cloud of salt. Oliver keeps coming and Jesse backs up so far that he bumps into one of the beds, just as the blade swings down against Claire. She manages to deflect it with her shotgun just in time, dodging out of the circle a minute later because it's not doing them any good anymore.

"Shit," Ben yelps, scrambling away in the opposite direction. "I shouldn't have said anything, sorry, sorry—"

"Just keep him occupied," she snaps back, then turns to Jesse. "Listen to me. You have to stop believing in him. That thing is _not real_ , and the only reason he can hurt you is because you still think he can."

"But he's right there," Jesse argues, cringing away from the force of Claire's gaze. "How am I supposed to stop believing in what I can see with my own two eyes?"

She lets out a breath and then grabs Jesse's left hand, hard. "No," she says, fingernails digging into his palm. " _I_ am right here. You are real. Ben is real. I am real. Oliver is nothing but a scar in your memory, and you _control_ him. So make him _go."_

It's hard to do anything but what Claire says when she's looking at him like that, holding fast without mercy. Jesse swallows and turns toward the tulpa, which is currently locked in a furious battle with Ben wielding an iron crowbar. "Hey," he croaks, squeezing Claire back as tightly as she's gripping him. "You don't belong here. Go away."

The tulpa seems to be able to hear him, at any rate; it shifts backwards a few inches and turns to look in Jesse's direction. Ben's eyes are wide, but thankfully he doesn't try to interrupt.

"You're—you're dead," Jesse stammers, trying not to meet the thing's eyes again. "You died, I killed you and I'm sorry, but you can't stay here and keep haunting me. I don't—don't want you here."

Not-Oliver cocks its head, just a few degrees further than a human should be able to.

"Please," Jesse whispers. "Please just go."

The air around the tulpa shimmers. Then, in one swift movement, it swings its machete at Ben's throat.

"Ben!" Claire cries, dropping Jesse's hand, and Jesse staggers backward. Thank God for Ben's hunting reflexes, because the blade doesn't take his head clean off, but there's a sickly wet sound and blood immediately starts pouring from the slash across his neck and shoulder as he hits the ground. Claire is there beside him a moment later, glaring at the tulpa in silent, helpless fury as it raises its arm to strike again.

_"No."_

Everyone freezes. Jesse walks across the room and puts himself between Oliver and his friends.

"You have taken," he says, shaking, "so much from me. You were my _family_. I would have done anything for you."

Oliver abandons Claire to swing at Jesse, but he just catches the blade with his bare hand and keeps talking, blood running down his wrist.

"It's your fault I'm scared to go outside. You knew what they were going to do to me in that shack and you _led me in there_. And now I'm—I can't—" Angry tears fill Jesse's eyes, but he blinks them back, the image in front of him wobbling between the monster and the Oliver he thought he knew. Ben and Claire have put so much trust in him, even these brief few months, and he's never been able to put his trust in them because of everything Oliver taught him. For the past three years, all of Jesse's instincts have whispered to him in Oliver's voice. That voice kept Jesse safe, far away from anyone that could possibly do him harm, from any human companionship at all—but that's not what he needs anymore. Oliver isn't here because Jesse wanted him to stay. Oliver is here because he's ready to let him go.

"I'm so sorry for what I did to you," Jesse whispers, "and I know you didn't deserve what you got. But not everyone is like you, Oliver." He straightens his spine. "Ben and Claire are not like you. And _you can't have them_."

Jesse loved Oliver once, yes. But he loves Ben and Claire more.

There's a moment, just briefly, when the tulpa's face becomes whole again and it looks like Oliver is about to say something to him. But the moment passes, and with it the ghost, the final image of Oliver Simms on earth. Jesse closes his eyes and lets the tears fall freely. _I'm sorry,_ he whispers in his head, to the part of him that brought this memory to life. _Goodbye._

The cold in the room breaks. When Jesse opens his eyes, Oliver is gone for good.

The dual hit of relief and loss is nearly enough to bring Jesse to his knees, but he hears a garbled noise of pain from behind him and realizes his job isn't over yet.

"Shh-sh-sh," says Claire, pressing her bare hands against the gash under Ben's ear as he groans under the force of it. "This is fine. You're okay." She's lying. The worry in her tone as stark and raw as Jesse's ever heard it. "Jesse, hand me the first aid kit."

Jesse barely hears her. His eyes are locked on Ben's wounds, dark red and gaping, blood seeping through Claire's fingers. He promised Ben that his powers would never hurt him.

"'Ss fine," Ben wheezes, trying to struggle into a sitting position. He's lying too: fresh blood gushes out whenever he moves. "Head wounds," he dismisses. "Lotta blood." In spite of everything he smiles woozily at Jesse. "You did good, Jess. You did good."

Jesse's throat closes, and just like that his mind is made up. It's not what Meg would use his power for, and it's not what Oliver would warn him against, but Ben and Claire make him better than that. He drops to his knees and says, "Not yet I haven't." Then he places his hand on Ben's cheek.

For a moment nothing happens, and his certainty wavers; he wasn't built for this. But he remembers how it felt to heal Claire. Jesse takes a deep breath and holds it: one, two, three, four. _This pain is mine,_ he tells the universe, because anything can bend itself to his will if only he's sure enough of what he wants.

And suddenly, it is.

Ben's skin sews itself shut even faster than Claire's did, the slash receding into a single pink line that fades into unblemished skin. Jesse's own skin splits open at the same time, a hot sting across the back of his neck, but he hardly notices—he cares about the color returning to Ben's face, the relieved slump of Claire's shoulders as he sits up properly.

"I did it," Jesse whispers, stunned. "I mean—did I? Does it still hurt?"

Ben beams at him, blood-soaked shirt and all. "You did it," he repeats. "You fixed me. It's totally gone."

Claire lets out a very long, slow breath. Then she turns to smile at Jesse too. "Looks like we can count on your power after all."

Jesse will always be dangerous, even to the two of them. He's lost control of his powers before, and he's all too certain it'll happen again. He's the Antichrist, a cursed creature born of darkness whose sole purpose is to do harm—but maybe, _maybe_ , with their help, he can find a way to do good.


	6. Hunters knowing your weaknesses.

"Salt?"

"Nope."

"Iron?"

"Nope."

"Hallowed ground?"

"Don't think so."

"Holy oil?"

Jesse frowns up from the bed of the truck, watching the sky turn colors as the sun goes down. They're at the real beach, now, and he can hear the Atlantic crashing against sand just beyond them. "What's holy oil?"

"We'll go with 'yes' just to be safe," Claire says. She and Ben are perched on the truck walls to either side of him. "Silver?"

"Yes," says Jesse. "Remember the net that demon wanted to catch me with?"

"Hold on," Ben cuts in. It was his idea to have this conversation out here; he _knows_ Jesse, understands that questions like these might make him nervous, and how the sight of the sky and the sound of the sea calms him. "Jesse's a demon, right? Why would salt not work and silver does?"

Jesse shrugs. "Don't ask me, mate. I didn't exactly pick and choose."

Claire props her head on one hand, looking thoughtfully down at Jesse. "Well, you're not dead," she says.

"No," Jesse agrees. "Possibly never will be. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Demons are dead," Claire explains. "They're vulnerable to the same things as ghosts, plus or minus an aversion to holiness. Someone dies, Hell warps their soul and it comes back demonic. But yours is hereditary." She ticks them off on her fingers. "Salt is for the dead; so is iron. Silver is for things that used to be human and aren't anymore—it's a purification, sort of. In that way you're more like other, living monsters."

"No offense," adds Ben.

They've only been out here fifteen minutes or so, and already Claire understands more about _how_ Jesse works than he himself ever has. She's theorized that he can't ever be exorcised, in Latin or Enochian, because his body still houses its original soul and the two can't be untangled; she's demonstrated a few more runes to be wary of. He wishes she had been there in the shack before he had to learn all this the hard way.

Jesse takes a deep breath and holds it for four seconds. He's not thinking about the Simmses, or how he learned his own vulnerabilities, or what happens to souls that get dragged to Hell.

"Shouldn't we be writing all this down?" Ben asks. "For science, or whatever."

"No." Claire meets Jesse's eyes; they're in perfect accord there. "If we keep it in our heads, no one can take it from us."

Jesse sits up, warm all over at the thought of Claire protecting him. "So what's this top secret plan of yours?" he asks, looking from one to the other. "Going to teach me to turn our enemies into charcoal?"

Claire looks expectantly at Ben, who looks just as expectantly back at her. "This was your idea, brains. You say it."

Claire clears her throat, looking almost embarrassed. "I thought we might try something more defensive." She holds up a small throwing knife from the weapons locker, glinting silver in the low light. "We know what might make you vulnerable out there. If we expose you to them in small doses, in a controlled environment, maybe they won't throw you as badly when they're being used against us."

"What she's trying to say is you've got the charcoal part covered," Ben puts in.

"What I'm _trying_ to say is it starts with feeling safe," she says. She touches the edge of her anti-possession tattoo, just peeking out above the neckline of her tank top. "So we'll try whatever you're comfortable with, and work our way up."

Out under the open sky, here with two people who know what he is and want to use their knowledge of his weaknesses to help him instead of hurt him, Jesse has never felt safer. He swallows, throat tight. "Thanks."

Claire dips her head in acknowledgment. Then she grins at him, sidelong, and gives the knife a playful flip. "What'll it be? We still have a little time before it gets dark."

"I have a squirt gun," offers Ben. "It's full of holy water."

"It's extremely small and it leaks if you fill it too full," Claire says. "I think he got it at a dollar store. But hey, it worked out better than the hula hoop full of salt." She hops down from the truck.

"Well if you're going to be like _that,_ " Ben says, hopping down from the truck too, "maybe we should invest in a Super Soaker!"

"We're not getting a _Super Soaker_ ," Claire dimisses. "What are you, twelve?"

"As the one about to be super soaked, I think I should be the judge of that," Jesse says, sliding out of the truck and shutting the back behind him. "Do they come in hot pink?" He winks at Ben.

"You, sir, are exactly on my level." Ben wraps an arm around Jesse's shoulders as they walk back to the motel room. Once, the sudden touch would have startled Jesse badly enough to have him call forth the fire, but now he welcomes it; leans a little into Ben without meaning to, some of the tension in his shoulders melting away. "You ready for a new, Super Soaker-filled era of your life?"

Jesse ducks his head, but his hair isn't quite long enough to hide his smile anymore. "Bring it on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are feeling generous, you can reblog this fic on [tumblr](http://cambionverse.tumblr.com/). If you're the type who enjoys stats & trivia, we also have a ["happy birthday" post](http://cambionverse.tumblr.com/post/182454974352) of sorts up on our blog to celebrate finally reaching this milestone date.
> 
> When we first started writing [_Cambion_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/221050) all the way back in 2011, 2019 seemed like it was a ridiculously long time away. But now here we are in the future! We made it! To anyone who is still reading with us EIGHT YEARS (!!!) later: thank you from the very bottom of our hearts. It's been a long and winding road so far, but it is beyond humbling to know there are still people coming along for the ride. We're so glad you're here, and we truly hope you enjoyed this year's work.
> 
> Happy Birthday, Jesse Turner. We promise it only gets better from here.


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